…a visual novel on screen, where you’re working a fictional hint line, with critical information in The Compendium, a dog-eared binder full of official docs mixed with handwritten
notes from previous counselors who figured out what actually works.
So yeah. It’s a bit like… Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, except instead of bomb defusal, you’re working on a computer game hint line in their heyday of circa 1993.
Customers call you, and you have to help them with their video game problems, ideally in accordance with company policy to try to guide the customer to their own answer
rather than telling them the solution outright. Oh, and also sometimes people call up about products that aren’t covered and you need to identify this promptly and get on to the next
caller.
Obviously you’ve already got an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the games already? No, you don’t, because before they could even start on making Hint Line
’93, the creators first needed to invent a fictional video games company, a catalogue of fictional games (including faked screenshots, history, lore, and BBS posts),
and more. But it wouldn’t matter anyway, because you get a thick manual – the compendium – of hints and tips to refer to
(also code wheels, post-its, and lots more).
The exhibit is designed to be experienced in-person, but – given that I live on the other side of the planet – I was delighted to see that the museum put a (less-tactile) version online
for visitors around the world to play.
Also: speaking as somebody with an awesome name, there are so many people with awesome names involved with this project. Mars
Buttfield-Addison and Paris Buttfield-Addison are perhaps my favourite. Excellent names.
This telegraph pole in the centre of Eynsham carries the scars of hosting countless community announcements, notices, and flyers over the last 30 years.
Somebody just called me and quickly decided it was a wrong number. The signal was bad and I wasn’t sure I’d heard them right, so I followed up by replying by text.
It turns out they asked Siri to call Three (the mobile network). Siri then presumably searched online, found Three Rings, managed to connect that to my mobile number, and called me.
Earlier this month, I received a phone call from a user of Three Rings, the volunteer/rota management
software system I founded1.
We don’t strictly offer telephone-based tech support – our distributed team of volunteers doesn’t keep any particular “core hours” so we can’t say who’s available at any given
time – but instead we answer email/Web based queries pretty promptly at any time of the day or week.
But because I’ve called-back enough users over the years, it’s pretty much inevitable that a few probably have my personal mobile number saved. And because I’ve been applying for a couple of
interesting-looking new roles, I’m in the habit of answering my phone even if it’s a number I don’t recognise.
Many of the charities that benefit from Three Rings seem to form the impression that we’re all just sat around in an office, like this. But in fact many of my fellow
volunteers only ever see me once or twice a year!
After the first three such calls this month, I was really starting to wonder what had changed. Had we accidentally published my phone number, somewhere? So when the fourth tech support
call came through, today (which began with a confusing exchange when I didn’t recognise the name of the caller’s charity, and he didn’t get my name right, and I initially figured it
must be a wrong number), I had to ask: where did you find this number?
“When I Google ‘Three Rings login’, it’s right there!” he said.
I almost never use Google Search2,
so there’s no way I’d have noticed this change if I hadn’t been told about it.
He was right. A Google search that surfaced Three Rings CIC’s “Google Business Profile” now featured… my personal mobile number. And a convenient “Call” button that connects you
directly to it.
Some years ago, I provided my phone number to Google as part of an identity verification process, but didn’t consent to it being shared publicly. And, indeed, they
didn’t share it publicly, until – seemingly at random – they started doing so, presumably within the last few weeks.
Concerned by this change, I logged into Google Business Profile to see if I could edit it back.
Apparently Google inserted my personal mobile number into search results for me, randomly, without me asking them to. Delightful.
I deleted my phone number from the business listing again, and within a few minutes it seemed to have stopped being served to random strangers on the Internet. Unfortunately deleting
the phone number also made the “Your phone number was updated by Google” message disappear, so I never got to click the “Learn more” link to maybe get a clue as to how and why this
change happened.
Don’t you hate it when you click the wrong button. Who reads these things, anyway, right?
Such feelings of rage.
Footnotes
1 Way back in 2002! We’re very nearly at the point where the Three Rings
system is older than the youngest member of the Three Rings team. Speaking of which, we’re seeking volunteers to help expand our support team: if you’ve got experience of
using Three Rings and an hour or two a week to spare helping to make volunteering easier for hundreds of thousands of people around the world, you should look us up!
2 Seriously: if you’re still using Google Search as your primary search engine, it’s past
time you shopped around. There are great alternatives that do a better job on your choice of one or more of the metrics that might matter to you: better privacy, fewer ads (or
more-relevant ads, if you want), less AI slop, etc.
I’m in an extremely rural area and I needed a phone call with my lawyer about my recent redundancy. Phone signal was very bad, so I resolved to
climb a nearby hill and call him back.
“I’m at a crossroads,” I said, when I finally found enough bars to have a conversation with him.
“In your life?” he asked.
“I guess,” I replied, “But also, y’know, literally.”
On Wednesday, Vodafone
announced that they’d made the first ever satellite video call from a stock mobile phone in an area with no terrestrial signal. They used a mountain in Wales for their experiment.
It reminded me of an experiment of my own, way back in around 1999, which I probably should have made a bigger deal of. I believe that I was the first person to ever send an email from
the top of Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon.
Nowadays, that’s an easy thing to do. You pull your phone out and send it. But back then, I needed to use a Psion 5mx palmtop, communicating over an infared link using a custom driver
(if you ever wondered why I know my AT-commands by heart… well, this isn’t exactly why, but it’s a better story than the truth) to a Nokia 7110 (fortunately it was cloudy enough to not
interfere with the 9,600 baud IrDA connection while I positioned the devices atop the trig point), which engaged a GSM 2G connection, over which I was able to send an email to myself,
cc:’d to a few friends.
It’s not an exciting story. It’s not even much of a claim to fame. But there you have it: I was (probably) the first person to send an email from the summit of Yr Wyddfa. (If you beat
me to it, let me know!)
…removing a SIM tray is harder than it looks when you don’t wear earrings. I had to search everywhere to find one of those little SIM tools…
Stuart writes a fun article about his experience of changing mobile network. It’s worth a read, and there’s only one “Dan pro tip” I’d add:
If you have a case on your mobile phone, tuck one of those SIM extractor tools into the case, behind your phone.
It’s exactly where you need it to be, if you need one yourself (you probably need to remove the case to access the SIM tray
anyway), but beyond that: it means you’re always carrying one for when a friend needs one. They’re also useful for pressing those tiny “factory reset” buttons you see
sometimes.
A SIM extractor has been sneakily part of my “everyday carry” for about a decade and it’s proven its value time and time
again.
Unable to sleep, I found myself wondering whether anybody with a retro-hipster vibe had built a smart pocketwatch. All your smartwatch features, but in pocketwatch format.
Then I realised I was describing a mobile phone on a keychain.
Called @Tesco Abingdon for a #flujab but fell down a black hole in their menu system. Had to choose the “continue to hold” option several times… and then nobody answered anyway…
This review of Vodafone originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.
Vodafone, 3 Cornmarket St, Oxford OX1 3EX, United Kingdom.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Like most mobile phone shops, this one enjoys a confusing layout and less-than-completely-helpful staff.
If you know exactly what you want then you can have a reasonable experience, but if you know exactly what you want then you’d be better to go online. If you’re not sure what you want,
you’re going to have an unhappy time full of upselling and jargon… so you’d do better to go online.
The network itself is good: broad coverage, good data speeds, nice international deals. But this shop is a perfect example of why their shops ought to already be a relic of history.
I’m trying to index the location of red telephone boxes in Oxford, for a project I’m doing. I’m especially interested in ones outside of the city centre (it’s easy to find the ones on
Broad Street, High Street, Parks Road, St. Giles, etc.). If you’re aware of any, or if you’re e.g. willing to keep your eyes open for them on the way to and from work/class/wherever
for the next couple of days, I’d really appreciate it. Also happy to throw Reddit Gold at people who are particularly helpful.
Want me to send you a reminder in a few days, once you’ve been looking for them? Leave a comment, and I’ll PM you a few days later. Want to know what the project is? Find a box for me
that I haven’t got on my list, and I’m happy to PM you the details.
Pocket dialling was bad enough. I once received a phone
call from a friend whose phone called me – as the last number he’d dialled – just as he was putting on a harness in anticipation of doing a bungee jump. So all I got to hear was
rustling, and shuffling… and then a blood-curdling scream. Nice one.
Hello? Yes, this is cat. Just thought I’d press some buttons and see who I got.
But in this age of smartphones, the pocket search has become a new threat. Thanks to the combination of touchscreens, anticipatory keyboards (I use SwiftKey, and I’m beginning to think that it knows me better than I do myself), and always-online devices, we’re able to perform quite
complex queries quite accidentally. I’ve got a particular pair of trousers which seems to be especially good at unlocking my phone, popping up a search engine, typing a query (thanks to
the anticipatory keyboard, usually in full words), and then taking a screenshot and saving it for me, so that I can’t later deny having searched for… whatever it was.
This morning, while cycling to work, I searched for the following (which I’ve reformatted by inserting line breaks, in order to transform it into the sort-of poem you might expect from
sombebody both insane and on hallucinogens):
thanks again
and it all goes on
and I will Also
Also A bit LIKE THAT
THE ANSWER is
That you are looking at your Local Ryanair
and a ripening
and a ripening
I can assure are a BIT
and see the new template by clicking here
for
for YOU GUYS
GUYS HAVE YOU ANY COMMENTS
ON MY WAY BACK FROM YOU
And the other side and I will have the same
as a friend or relative
relative humidity
humidity
to you
you are here car
car
and
and embarrassing
embarrassing
the best thing is the first three years and over
over?
Maybe my phone is gradually becoming sentient and is trying to communicate with me. I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
The explosion of smartphone ownership over the last decade has put powerful multi-function computers into the pockets of almost half of us. But despite the fact that the average smartphone contains at least as much
personally-identifiable information as its owner keeps on their home computer (or in dead-tree
form) at their house – and is significantly more-prone to opportunistic theft – many users put significantly less effort into protecting their mobile’s data than they do
the data they keep at home.
Too late, little Nokia E7: I’ve got physical access to you now.
I have friends who religiously protect their laptops and pendrives with TrueCrypt, axCrypt, or similar, but still carry around an unencrypted mobile phone. What we’re talking about here is a device that contains all of the contact details for you
and everybody you know, as well as potentially copies of all of your emails and text messages, call histories, magic cookies for social networks and other services, saved passwords, your browsing history (some people would say that’s the
most-incriminating thing on their phone!), authentication apps, photos, videos… more than enough information for an attacker to pursue a highly-targeted identity theft or
phishing attack.
Android pattern lock: no encryption, significantly less-random than an equivalent-length PIN, and easily broken by a determined attacker.
“Pattern lock” is popular because it’s fast and convenient. It might be good enough to stop your kids from using your phone without your permission (unless they’re smart enough to do
some reverse smudge engineering: looking for the smear-marks made by
your fingers as you unlock the device; and let’s face it, they probably are), but it doesn’t stand up to much more than that. Furthermore, gesture unlock solutions dramatically reduce
the number of permutations, because you can’t repeat a digit: so much so, that you can easily perform a rainbow table attack on the SHA1 hash to reverse-engineer somebody’s gesture.
Even if Android applied a per-device psuedorandom salt to the gesture pattern (they don’t, so you can download a prefab table), it doesn’t take long to generate an SHA1 lookup of
just 895,824 codes (maybe Android should have listened to Coda
Hale’s advice and used BCrypt, or else something better still).
An encrypted iPhone can be configured to resist brute-force attacks by wiping the phone after repeated failures, which replaces one security fault (brute-force weakness) with another
(a denial of service attack that’s so easy that your friends can do it by accident).
These attacks, though (and the iPhone isn’t bulletproof, either), are all rather academic, because
they are trumped by the universal rule
that once an attacker has physical access to your device, it is compromised. This is fundamentally the way in which mobile security should be considered to be equivalent
to computer security. All of the characteristics distinct to mobile devices (portability, ubiquity, processing power, etc.) are weaknesses, and that’s why
smartphones deserve at least as much protection as desktop computers protecting the same data. Mobile-specific features like “remote wipe” are worth having, but can’t
be relied upon alone – a wily attacker could easily keep your phone in a lead box or otherwise disable its connectivity features until it’s cracked.
The bottom line: if the attacker gets hold of your phone, you’re only as safe as your encryption.
The only answer is to encrypt your device (with a good password). Having to tap in a PIN or password may be less-convenient than just “swipe to unlock”, but it gives
you a system that will resist even the most-thorough efforts to break it, given physical access (last year’s
iPhone 4 vulnerability notwithstanding).
It’s still not perfect – especially here in the UK, where the RIPA can be used (and has been used) to force key surrender. What we really need is
meaningful, usable “whole system” mobile encryption with plausible deniability. But so long as you’re only afraid of identity thieves and phishing scammers, and not being
forced to give up your password by law or under duress, then it’s “good enough”.
Of course, it’s only any use if it’s enabled before your phone gets stolen! Like backups, security is one of those things that everybody should make a habit of thinking
about. Go encrypt your smartphone; it’s remarkably easy –
You just can’t rely on GMail’s “contacts” search any more. Look what it came up with:
Not a result I'd commonly associate with the word "virgin".
With apologies to those of you who won’t “get” this: the person who came up in the search results is a name that is far, far away, in my mind, from the word “virgin”.
In not-completely-unrelated news, I use a program called SwiftKey X on my phone, which uses Markov chains (as I’ve described before) to intelligently suggest word completion and
entire words and phrases based on the language I naturally use. I had the software thoroughly parse my text messages, emails, and even this blog to help it learn my language patterns.
And recently, while writing a text message to my housemate Paul, it suggested the following sentence as the content of my
message:
I am a beautiful person.
I have no idea where it got the idea that that’s something I’m liable to say with any regularity. Except now that it’s appeared on my blog, it will. It’s all gone a little recursive.
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